Past or Present
by avengedgal
Summary: After learning of Elijah's compulsion of Aurora, Klaus is left determined to re-assess his life and past loves. Feeling that he has no-where to turn to with the revelation of his returning love, Klaus begins to write a journal detailing the impasse that he has now reached - will be choose to re-visit an old love that he once thought lost or will be pursue a new love developing?
1. Chapter 1 - Klaus' Diary

When I look back on my life, I see pain, mistakes and heartache yet when I look in the mirror, I see strength lessons learned and pride in myself. I am therefore at an impasse as to whether to despise my brother from removing my first love from my life or to thank him for making me into the man I am today.

Of all of the bright cruel lies to be told, I have always believed that the cruellest was the one called love. An old acquaintance once said to me that life was cruel and if we did not believe love to exist, why would we want to live. Another told me that anyone who is capable of love, it capable of being saved. However, I do not believe either and I believe that in the end we are all infinitely and utterly alone. I believe that my once ability to love was the very reason that my soul may never be saved. The heartbreak endured from the first woman that I gave my heart to has made me into the monster that many people see me as. I had never looked back at my love for Aurora with much fondness, only with repulsion as to how I could have allowed myself to be so weak and so beholding to another person and to allow her to break my heart with such ease. I believed her to be a cruel individual and looked back at her existence in my life with disgust. Since her dismissal of my love over a thousand years ago, I have found it difficult to perceive the concept of handing my heart to another, often sabotaging the relationships with ones who could have offered me something new.

However, of late, I have found myself allowed feelings to be stirred for a new individual in my life. Camille has offered me solace in times of emotional need and has allowed me to explore the reasons behind my character and despite all of the flaws and downright awful things that I have exposed to her, I still find that she allows me to ease the burden onto her, often helping me to understand why it is I do the things that I do and helping me to learn that though it is acceptable to be hurt, it is not so to be cruel. I find that with her I can see the shades of another man appearing, a man more becoming and acceptable to raise and teach my daughter and perhaps a man that my family would be proud to call their own.

However, it would appear that my family themselves are not the saints that they have always painted themselves out to be, particularly my elder brother Elijah, always held out to be such a gentleman and a matriarch of the family, so quick to condemn my actions against family when all the while he had taken away the one thing that could have steered my course differently, a woman who could have prevented the creation of the foul and vicious creature that I have become and the actions that I still try so desperately to atone for. It would appear that he holds the largest burden of atonement.

Therefore, now I find myself at an impasse - looking into Aurora's eyes and understanding that she had no choice but to say the cruel and hurtful things that she did, that she was compelled and helpless to break my heart makes me long for a love that we once had, an eternal love that we could have had before it were so cruelly ripped from us. I cannot help but consider though that I am not the man that loved Aurora, I am cold and I am calculated and before now have thought myself incapable of love until I had started to explore my self with Cami. I had begun to accept the feelings that now stirred for her and to appreciate the man that she was helping me to become - a family man with a moral compass and regret for the terrible things that he had done in his life but able to move into a new chapter with his daughter.

My mind is now conflicted and I have no idea what to do or where to seek counsel - I can no longer trust my family for the actions that they have withheld from me and feel as though I have no where to turn for support and so, like friends in the past, I have chosen to write down these inner thoughts in order to try and find a conclusion to this romantic predicament, but alas I feel no more intent on a plan of action than I did when I started this incessant rambling...


	2. Chapter 2 - Klaus Predicament

Dawn unfolds anew and I awoke this morning to find myself no more at peace that when I hopelessly grasped at sleep in the tormented hours that lay before me the previous evening. Spending time with Aurora has awoken something in me that I thought long since last, a speck of the humanity that existed before life's cruelties had hardened me to its bitter sting. Before I had built those walls after she had cast me aside, I had looked at my eternity as a beacon of hope, an ability to spend an endless span of time with the women I loved, before I realised that such wanting was foolish and in the end eternity as it would seem was just an endless span of loneliness, a torment that one must learn to guard himself from and guard myself I have, undeniably and unfathomably, even casting aside my own blood at times in order to protect myself from any heartbreak. In the end, we can only trust ourselves.

It is with this realisation that I uncover that every fibre of my being wants to let that guard down, to allow this woman to again become a part of this cursed existence and to somehow ease just a minute part of the loneliness that I have encountered for 1000 years. Of course, there have been other women to whom I have come close to letting the walls down to, but ultimately it was she that had torn out my heart all those centuries ago and when she did, it remained with her.

However, the experiences of the past few years have tempted and compelled me to begin to built a new one in the void that had remained since that encounter on that historical night, a void that had now become smaller and smaller, holding in it a multitude of individuals. My beloved siblings who had time and time again forgiven my wrongdoings, friends who had shown me kindness and loyalty over the years, Hayley who had given me the blessing of becoming a father, the aptly named Hope who had provided me with just that and of course, the lovely Camillie.

I have seen Camille today in the quarter. It seems like a lifetime since we conversed and I pity that recent events have somewhat interfered with our time together. Although we have not seen each other in a while however, our time together always falls right back into place. I find myself completely at ease with her and able to discuss or explore any part of me that needs to be uncovered. Camillie is undivided in her attention and keen to ease the burden that the past centuries have placed upon me. When I look into her eyes, I feel a spark and I know that were it not for the obstacles that my existence and my immortal state presented to us, if I were just the man that I was before my wretched mother cursed me to this existence, I would be with her and I would give her all of me, but alas, I am what I am, I am an immortal and there is a long line of people who queue to see my demise and to align myself with such a weak mate, a human, someone so fragile and so capable of being ripped from me, I cannot allow that to happen and so, I must distance myself. Aurora's presence in New Orlean's has helped with that distance and helped to explore the demons from my past.

From saying all of this, I am still yet to uncover whether Aurora is in fact that - is she a demon in disguise as my first love - can I trust her. Having spent the night with her, I have opened myself up to a fragility, allowing myself to revert to a newly turned version of myself, one that had not been hardened by 1,000 years of pain, heartbreak, betrayal and loneliness. However, she does not make me feel at ease as Camille does - in fact - she does quite the opposite. I am constantly guarded around Aurora, never truly knowing her intentions for me and so I can never be the man she loved and I can never love her as I once did.


	3. Chapter 3 - Safe

I knew the day would come where I would have to choose, have to place my heart with one of them and walk away from the one that remained. I did not, however, anticipate that my hand would be forced or who would force it so.

When anticipating that I was not the man that Aurora had once loved, I did not stop to ponder for a moment that perhaps she was not the girl for whom I had once shown affections. Aurora, as I had known her a thousand years ago, was kind and caring. She was also naïve and a little mischievous but it would seem that the mischief that had once lay inside her had blossomed into a encumbrance of wickedness, such wickedness that I had not expected from she whom I had spent so many years longing for. Betrayal is the one thing that I will not abide and Aurora had done just that and it was a betrayal of the deepest nature, she had meddled with my family, a crime that many have met their end in payment of - many of whom had done far less than Aurora had managed. But alas due to my adolescent affections, my youngest sister now lay helpless at the bottom of ocean, not one of us able to find her. I had of course attempted to resolve the situation by sending Aurora to find her but little did I know that Aurora was planning to take something from me that I would now realise was just as precious.

Earlier this week, Elijah had asked me the simple question of whether I did indeed love Aurora and despite all that she had done to Rebekah, I still found myself unable to deny the claim. Now, however, Aurora had taken Camille. The ounce of affection that I still harboured after a thousand years had vanished instantaneously and I now have only one goal in mind, one which I will do anything to achieve and if that means ending Aurora, then that is what I shall do. I need to find Camille safe and well and I simply do not know what I shall do if any harm has come to her. As to the woman that I once claimed to love and had spent so many hours pondering, I will tear her limb from limb if even a hair on Camille's head has been touched. They often say that 'you don't know what you have until it is gone' and nothing could ring truer.

I cannot believe my stupidity and my naivety to think that this girl could live up to the burden of her memory, a memory tarnished by heartbreak and longing and a man who did not yet know enough about the world to realise that what we had was adolescent and childish - what I have with Camille, it was real. There were emotions beginning to stir that I had never experienced before and I needed to know that she was safe. I will not rest until I know that she is safe and I will not let her suffer through my own misgivings and wrongdoing. I will do whatever it takes to ensure that she is returned home unharmed.


End file.
